Jordy Gibbons

When I realized I had gone an entire month without updating the blog, I thought, "I'm going to write about what it's like to be an adult with ADHD." So I did. Then, at two months I thought, "Now I'm really going to write about what it's like to have ADHD." Which meant I was finally going to submit the long post I had already written and saved. But I didn't. Suffice it to say, it's not just some make believe diagnosis, it can severely impact peoples lives and they make these awesome little pills that almost make it go away, if you can afford them. Anyway, as the title suggests, I want to talk about Jordy Gibbons. So I will.

Yesterday was the last day of Jordy's high school semester. Jordy, for those of you who don't know, was my mentee; or, protege if you will. He asked if he could  do his program with me back in May when he came out to help with the Wack Attack playhouse. This program is supposed to be some kind of opportunity for kids to go out and shadow a career or something, I guess. Some might call it an excuse to get out of school early every afternoon, I never dabbled in that kind of tomfoolery, so I can't say.

Jordy started out as a willing helper and wound up my second hand man by the end of the semester. I'm not ashamed to say that I really don't like being up high on stuff. Luckily, Jordy is part spider monkey and basically ran circles around the roof of the barn for the past two weeks, while I crawled around on all four. It's too bad he had to go, because he was starting to pull some serious weight around here. Jordy also opened my eyes to the world of high end ginger ale; specifically, Blenheim Ginger Ale (or The 'Heim as I like to call it), the hottest knock-your-socks-off ale on the market.

Despite all the praise I can heap upon Jordy, the one thing I really want to get across, the thing that impresses me the most about him, is that he is the type of guy who is genuinely respectful and nice to everyone and totally cool at the same time. Jordy's parents are -by his own admission- super cool as well, and not in the "we let our kids do whatever they want so they'll think we're cool" kind of way, but in the more difficult "we're open, honest, respectful and loving all the time" kind of way. In short, I want Georgie to grow up and be Jordy, and I want my kids to get along with me the way Jordy gets along with his Dad. I don't think I'm doing a great job so far, but I know where I want to be, so I have to thank my mentee for that.

Just so you know we haven't been totally screwing around, here's a few pics. Also, we're sitting on a bunch of video footage that will be put together to continue the pole barn video series. Sorry about the long wait...

This one's a repeat, but dang. I feel like the barn's been dragging on forever, I guess it's not that bad though considering this was a month or two into the semester.

Laying some decking down in the loft.

The roof has been the longest part of this process by far, largely due to my unconventional, highly labor (and time) intensive choice of roofing. I'll go into it later.

It's going to be most old-timey looking barn (at least from the outside) in the county. If I'm lucky, it will even keep a little rain out.

You might remember my mentioning way back about Jordy's rock and roll band. It's already impressive for a 17 year-old to be able to say he's had a band for almost 6 years; but these dudes topped it off by recording their first album over Thanksgiving break. I've listened to it about 15 times, let me just say this; it's more than impressive and they deserve a lot of respect for it. They have a Facebook page here. I think you can listen to a little snippet of the album here too.

As for the rest of you, maybe you should subscribe to this blog so you can get friendly reminders when I post the rest of the barn videos and stuff like that. I've been a slackey blogger lately, but I've been cooking some major stuff up. So it's coming.

-F.W.